The MOD Approach
We like ‘design’ to be informed, accessible (for both the readers and the creators), open-source, multi-authored, debated, and fun. We are interested in information design and visualisation practices that empower not only the designers but also the users/readers/audience to understand, to learn from, to modify and to contextualise. We believe in ideas of open-source, copyleft and collaborative multi-authorship.
MOD engages with the specific contexts and processes of urban transformation in India by undertaking observations and analyses of the trajectories and the discourses and the forces of urban change; by collecting, archiving and visualising information and communicating with an aim to make the city observable for and by citizens.
MOD specialises in three kinds of activities:
visualisation: visualising and communicating information – issues, debates and experiences
modification: modifying approaches, perspectives, visions objects, buildings and cities
design and curation: designing and curating information, discussions, environments and experiences
We identified six ideas/trajectories/techniques for structuring the work layout and approach of MOD:
open-source and multi-authorship: open-source systems and archives, open and multi-authored planning/design, participatory approaches, real-time design, copy-left, web 2.0
observing and organising complexity: fractal design, observing fractal realities, complexity as an opportunity, organisation/ management of complexity not by simplification but by recognition
creative entrepreneurship and informal flows: local markets and local products, multi-functional spaces, bottom-up entrepreneurship, support and networking, cultural economies, informal flows of people, resources and knowledge, informal-formal interactions
mapping and visualising: making the city observable, mapping city processes and city experiences, sensible mapping, information visualisation, visualisation as analysis and for analysis
re-inventing historical references: exploring, excavating and archiving historical references, re-visiting old debates and decisions, re-invention as re-contextualisation
visions and future-thinking as tools to create debate: urban visions, futurtrop, visions as provocations, future projections to re-think the present
